The current issue of New York Magazine has a story on Tim Geithner way worth reading. It explains how the Treasury secretary got the job, the mistakes he made, his expectations, and our expectations about his performance. It also talks about his competition and prospects.
The title of the article is: “Inside Obama’s Economic Brain Trust: It’s not pretty at this moment.”
The author, John Heilemann, does a great reporting job and has many good quotes such as:
On Wall Street, meanwhile, where Geithner’s stock has been falling precipitously for weeks, a prominent Democratic banker (and Obama backer) told me, “It’s not that everyone here thinks he should be fired. It’s just that there’s no one who would stand up right now and publicly throw their support behind him.”
He also has some good insights into the president’s agenda:
With an agenda like this, it might be tempting for Obama to tilt toward a full-throated kind of left-leaning populism—especially at moment when populist ire in all its incarnations is plainly in the ascendancy. Some of Obama’s political people, including his senior adviser, David Axelrod, certainly have inclinations in this direction, and are plainly worried that the populist ascendancy might threaten to derail his agenda unless he co-opts it.
Read the article here.